


Up the Mountain (Out the Window)

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Archaeology, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Gen, Golden route, Horses, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Mental Health Issues, Post-War, estate management
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28760532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: Since ancient times, there have been rumours that relics of great power lie hidden through Fódlan.Upon returning to Aegir from the war, Ferdinand thinks his home largely, almost oddly unchanged. This assumption does not last very long.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41
Collections: The Three Houses AU Bang





	Up the Mountain (Out the Window)

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring wonderful art by [@Catatune](https://twitter.com/Catatune); please feel free to connect with me [@Metallic_Sweet](https://twitter.com/Metallic_Sweet)

**prologue.** _The Legend of the Silver Maiden_

Excerpt from the third volume of _The Rise and Fall of the Adrestian Empire_ by R.D.A. Arnault:

The events of the epic poem, _The Legend of the Silver Maiden_ , are generally accepted as the unknown author’s attempt to create a founding myth for Fódlan drawing upon events of the War of the Three Lords. Scholars have argued over the form and style of the poem as it does not follow poetic or bardic convention. Instead, it appears to be a written form of oral history and some early manuscripts contain stage and performance instructions. Scholarship is divided between those who believe the poem is meant for theatrical performance, like the Folios of the Mittelfrank Opera Company, and those who see it as a court pageant of the Castle Fhirdiad.

 _The Diary of Manuela Casagranda_ offers the most valuable insight into the contemporary performance of the poem. Manuela Casagranda was a prominent former member of the Mittelfrank Opera Company who lent her substantial knowledge to its re-founding post-war. She was also the personal physician of House Blaiddyd from early 1187 until her death in 1219. She is listed as a combatant in the final action of the War of the Three Lords, and her commentary upon _The Legend of the Silver Maiden_ reflects her multitude of experience and tactical knowledge.

Of particular note is her account of a public performance of the poem. While Casagranda does not indicate where the performance took place, she indicates it was part of an annual festival celebrating the end of the War of the Three Lords. Her focus upon the following passage lends great validity to the long-held belief that weapons and other artefacts from the war were deposited into a hoard:

    When the battle won  
The forces of evil gone  
To beckon in the new light  
Put to rest our tools to fight  
For all the Goddess’s beauty and might  
Power corrupts all who feed upon [ _sic_ ]  

  
Casagranda states that “should any Crest relics be found, there will be dire consequences. I thought the inclusion of this passage to be unwise, but it is popular because it stirs people’s imagination [of the Goddess]”. The Church of Seiros was in a precarious position following the war as the Archbishop Byleth I struggled to reunite theological fractions after the Schism of 1187.

Therefore, the popularity of _The Legend of the Silver Maiden_ and presumably other pageant plays and poems was important to convince the public of the newly united Fódlan’s political and religious validity. The idea of a hoard of blessed relics clearly captured enough imagination and attention that Casagranda allowed or even encouraged the inclusion of the verse. Where exactly the hoard could be has been a source of ongoing debate for over 700 years as the location of the Silver Maiden is suspected to be in the north, but it is unknown if it is closer to the historic border between Gautier and Sreng or further south toward Fhirdiad. This archeological debate is well discussed by other scholars outwith of this text…

**i.** _Aegir_

Aegir has, despite the recent war, changed very little.

The hills are green and fog-covered as Ferdinand rides around the outskirts of the lower town. The air is cool and damp but not unpleasantly so. It smells of loam and distantly of sheep, who have already been shepherded out of their paddock in the early morning to graze. The town itself is barely awake aside from the bakers, who are up before everyone, and the night watch, who are likely beginning to turn in for the day. Ferdinand has suspected for some time that there are others awake, but their deeds are kept as private as any modestly sized town allows.

The old dirt road is flat and well-trodden, and Ferdinand barely has to guide Tristan as it slopes and turns towards the eastern border of his family seat and estate. It is not because Tristan remembers Aegir. The stallion is only two and a half years old, and Ferdinand purchased him south of Enbarr after seeing his wyvern, Brangaine, into the adept care of Claude von Riegan. He had felt desperately lonely without an animal, and Tristan had caught his eye at a show. Ferdinand had gone to simply to browse and to make sure Sylvain Jose Gautier didn’t bleed freely all his victory pay on the dog and horse races.

“Well, now there’s the cheery Ferdinand we all know and love!” Sylvain laughed as Ferdinand stroked Tristan’s main in the sale paddock and nearly got his chin broken by an enthusiastic nuzzling. “Good to see you smile again.”

“I rather think I smile too much,” Ferdinand said because he did not want rumours to start around that he was troubled, even if he was. “Smiling for the horses isn’t the same as smiling for any little amusement.”

Sylvain snorted even as he watched Ferdinand fishing through his coat for his cheque book. “I would say any amusement is worth smiling at,” he said, and he immediately put on a smile as three ladies passed them on their way to view the ponies.

Ferdinand suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He scribbled down what he supposed was a respectable sum of money, perhaps a bit much for a horse he hadn’t yet had the chance to ride and also which didn’t entirely know the lineage. It mattered little, though, because he wanted Tristan and had no patience at the time for haggling. Sylvain said nothing regarding any of this, which warmed Ferdinand to him on a deeply sentimental level.

“What are your plans?” Ferdinand asked as they left the sales stalls with Tristan, who followed them easily with Ferdinand’s fingers lightly upon his bridle. “Are you going home to Gautier?”

“Eh,” Sylvain said, gaze on the path through the market; he was looking in the general direction of the chickens with no particular interest. “My father’s in good health, so I doubt he’s too keen to see me. I’ll probably hang out here in Enbarr for a while. Crash with Dimitri or Felix, maybe. They’ve got citylane houses.”

Ferdinand nodded, not mentioning that Sylvain had a residence just like Ferdinand in the quiet and stately eastside of town. It was how he knew Sylvain was planning to come out of the races, and why he’d stepped in to offer an alternative daytime activity. The war had only been over for two months, and Ferdinand and Sylvain had only been back from the Continent a couple of weeks. Unlike Ferdinand, who had business to take care of in Enbarr due to discovering upon arrival that his father had passed four months before, Sylvain had immediately stuck himself into the summer social season; he had gotten rumours started about himself just as quickly.

“What of your other friend?” Ferdinand asked as Sylvain’s attention drifted towards two young couples followed closely by chaperones. “Miss Galatea?”

“Oh, Ingrid is mad at me right now,” Sylvain said, smiling easily but with no pleasantness to the expression. “I think she expected me to pick up propriety and good, upstanding behaviour. We went to war, not to manners school.”

“Well,” Ferdinand said before clearing his throat because the awkwardness was making his voice threaten to break like he had become a boy again. “I would be surprised if I ever learned manners. Even my mother could not get them into my head.”

“Manners won’t catch you the light of love,” Sylvain said, very breezily and grinning none too privately at Ferdinand. “But you’re the type to want a sweet and loving wife, aren’t you?”

“I have not had time to give much thought to such matters,” Ferdinand said, which made Sylvain laugh.

Ferdinand cannot say that he was terribly sorry that it was then that they had to part ways because Sylvain was clearly set upon causing trouble for himself and Ferdinand needed to take Tristan home to be registered in the mews. It was a troublesome process: Ferdinand had not intended to buy a horse during the time he was in Enbarr, so he had not gone out of his way to build a relationship with the master of the mews. He had to put on all of his charm and a pretty bit of coin to get one of the private stalls. There were always a few open, held for guests in higher standing than Ferdinand, who may have been the new Duke Aegir but was, off the battlefield, largely unknown. The silver piece, slipped into the mews manager’s pocket, was what truly puts a smile on both their faces.

“Rest assured, my lord,” the stout man said as he handed Ferdinand the key to the stall, “your new mount will be in the best of care.”

 _His name is Tristan,_ Ferdinand wanted to say, but he sensed his bad temper would undo all of his hard work and so covered his frustration with a toothy smile.

It likely was misinterpreted as blunt enthusiasm. He suppressed the urge to run out of Enbarr right then, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Luckily, Ferdinand did not need to be in Enbarr longer than a week. He never was one for city life, unlike his father who preferred the varied entertainments and social scenes. While Ferdinand loved the opera and theatre and had, at least prior to the war, enjoyed balls for the dancing and parlour parties where he could entertain by playing the piano and singing, he found city life stifling and the type of people who thrived in it difficult to understand and more than occasionally frightening.

Before the war, it was easy to hide his discomfort by being a good son. His father, following his mother’s death, brought Ferdinand to Enbarr to help him ease into public society. Ferdinand was young and eager to matriculate into and flourish at Garreg Mach Officers Academy, and all he needed to be able to do was articulate his interests in his studies and talk a little and not too much about his interests in history and weapon maintenance. On the surface, it should have been easy, but, in practice, it was torture. It had always been a strange, heart-pounding dance of speaking and watching the faces of both adults and peers for when he had gotten too excited or spoken too much or even offended by whatever tone or gesture he had made.

In this sense, the war was easier. Ferdinand had to speak bluntly and loudly, and it saved his fellow flyers’ lives. Major Byleth Eisner, who oversaw him and many of the barely adult nobles and commoners who had left the academy early to join the war effort, gave him command because he thought quickly, astutely, and rationally on the field. The first two qualities were told to him directly, and the acknowledgement bolstered him. He enjoyed Byleth’s fairness, and he felt like he could trust their methodical and dispassionate assessments, especially because it made the major difficult to read.

The third quality, however, he learned much later when Byleth was thought dead and everything seemed all but lost. Ferdinand listened with mounting anxiety and frustration to Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude. They kept squabbling over what to do next because they were deep in enemy territory and retreat or retrieval of Byleth was possibly more dangerous than plowing forward. Time trickled forward. There was no agreement, and Ferdinand heart pounded until his body tricked itself into believing he was on a battlefield.

Everything else bled away. Captains Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude were still arguing, and Hubert, Dedue, and Hilda had joined in. Lorenz stood with his hand clenched over his lips, having been shouted at to be silent. Ferdinand could hear everyone’s breathing. Short and sharp. Ferdinand’s heart was slow. He breathed deep. Alone in the din:

Ferdinand was at peace.

“Even if Major Eisner is dead or alive, it does not matter.”

Something about his tone and not his volume made all eyes turn to him. He did not baulk. He could not. He felt, effectively, nothing at all.

“We cannot retreat,” he said because it was the only truth. “It is cowardly, and we have no way to request new orders from command. We cannot waste more time on Major Eisner because trying to reclaim them from the ravine we cannot see the bottom of is folly. We must press forward until we either find a safe way to contact command or until we meet the enemy.”

Pointing that out, speaking as he had grown used to on the field before his superiors who were also his peers:

It changed everything.

Ferdinand was right. He could not and fundamentally would not take back his words. It was the only logical path, and Ferdinand’s assessment was heeded. They plowed forward, marking new graves in their wake. Ferdinand flew ahead beside Claude, watching the sky stretch out beyond the horizon. On the ground, Ferdinand oversaw the armoured corps bringing up the rear with the heavy artillery. The calm settled in as it never used to outside of battle and made a home for itself beneath his skin.

Now:

Ferdinand guides Tristan up the grassy knoll that is the border of his estate. At the top, surrounded by mild, dew and overnight rain damp vegetation, Ferdinand gazes out over Aegir. The town just waking lies to his back, and the only sounds audible to his ears are the distant bleating of sheep beginning their journey from the paddock to the fields for grazing. The sun does not come through the clouds. It is a dim, mild grey day.

It is strange, Ferdinand thinks, to be so changed when Aegir has changed not at all.

❧

The estate home of House Aegir is where Ferdinand spent the majority of his childhood. It was, as his father was so often in Enbarr and, until the war, on the Continent, entirely his mother’s domain until her death when Ferdinand was fifteen. She ran the house with great pride, and Ferdinand was part of that pride. It was from his venerable mother that he learned what manners he has, and why he knows and loves better how to run a household than salon debate or politics.

“I will readily admit,” Hubert von Vestra says in lieu of a greeting as he and Petra MacNeary enter Ferdinand’s reading room to join him over lunch, “I am impressed with the organisation of your staff.”

“Oh,” Ferdinand says, half-risen from his desk chair; it takes him a moment to recover from the pleasant surprise of a compliment from Hubert. “Thank you very much. I will pass that onto Geraldine and Callum. I trust that the ride from Bergliez was not too wet?”

“It was only marginally damp,” Petra says, accepting Ferdinand's kiss to her hand with a warm smile. “I, too, am impressed with your staff. It is not often that a head butler is so sincere in greeting.”

“My mother believed deeply in hospitality going hand in hand with respect and consideration to all,” Ferdinand says, reaching up to push his hair out of his face. “I hope to uphold her vision rather than my father’s methods.”

Hubert and Petra are kind enough not to follow on from his comment. They both understand well that Ferdinand departed his father’s approaches and opinions by the time they all met at Garreg Mach. It was not something Ferdinand advertised in their short academy days, but when the war came, he departed from his father completely by requesting early officer commission from the then Archbishop Rhea. The commission sent Ferdinand into the service of the Church’s forces and held precedence over his father’s attempt to ask for him to be exempt. Petra and Hubert had both done something similar.

Hubert’s father, supported by the former Lord Arundel and Duke Aegir, had made a highly public call in _The Enbarr Chronicle_ for noble sons and daughters to return to their families to receive guidance about their possible roles in the war. Aside from his political policies and rare public speeches, that is Ferdinand’s primary knowledge of the former Marquis. It had also been a complete embarrassment and waste of time by the time it was published. Hubert, unbeknownst to his father, had already sided in all manners with Edelgard years before, who then leveraged her place as House Hresvelg’s heir to bring Adrestia fully into the war. Ferdinand had already made his overtures to the Church, but their rebellions brought them together as they were all placed under Byleth’s command.

Before the war, Hubert had not been someone Ferdinand would have elected for company. Vestra was a branch house of the Hresvelg family back in the times immemorial, and only recently in its two thousand year history had members of House Vestra begun to venture out into business and society separate of the main house. Hubert took the last step, peeling off his father’s shadow and charging, as they all did, towards the future’s light. In this, Hubert owes much of his fortune to Edelgard, much as Ferdinand does to the Church.

They both, therefore, hold equal amounts of admiration and envy for Petra, whose bravery and personal abilities are always at the fore. She entered the war on her own volition with no formal support from her grandfather or the Church. Brigid did not have resources to furnish an army, but her grandfather sent her mounts and money to purchase whatever she needed. The financial support, informal and tactical, was all they had in that horrible stretch of the war when Byleth was gone and the whole effort seemed all but lost. Ferdinand and Petra flew together in all the final battles, and there is no one else that Ferdinand would trust completely with his back.

In the early afternoon light, Ferdinand lays out the building plans and map of the estate on his desk and the reception table. The map is much older than the building plans and the silver seal still bears the ornamental Crest of Flames. Hubert’s gaze lingers on it as Petra leans forward to examine the northern border between Aegir and Varley.

“When you said you wanted our opinions about land management, I did not think we would be examining your entire domain.”

“Land and estate management is my specialty,” Ferdinand says because, for all that Sylvain and Lorenz at times told him he was weird, boring, and overly optimistic, he had gotten the highest marks alongside Petra on the subjects. “I need your eye on the current economic positions of my fathers investments in the past five years.”

Hubert lips thin because that will be no small task, but there is no maliciousness behind the expression. He, like Petra alongside Lorenz and Mercedes who are set to arrive from Gloucester later in the day, had volunteered to support Ferdinand in the transition into his official capacity as Duke Aegir. There is a lot of work to be done, much of which is not particularly easy or entertaining.

Ferdinand moves to pick up the box of recent tax documents. It is in haphazard shape but not because of his father for once. If the former Duke had been anything good, he was organised in a way that Ferdinand can only have fever dreams of being. When he turns back, Hubert is riling through the most recent updates to the building plans. Petra watches him, a curious, piercing look to her eyes.

She looks like that when sighting targets on the horizon.

“Is it true you and Bernadetta had a marriage promise?”

Ferdinand blinks, momentarily taken aback before he grimaces. He moves to the table and sets the document box on a sufficiently empty space on the reception table. It smashes a couple of corners of older building plans, causing Hubert to frown.

“Yes,” Ferdinand says, and he uses a firmer tone than is probably polite because he really does not want to go into that. “But I think we’re better off as siblings in arms, don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” Petra says, and she smiles on a bit of her own private amusement without saying anything more.

Ferdinand suppresses only with great effort and practice the urge to pursue her amusement. Petra is much more astute in her ability to fish out information, and Ferdinand truly does not want to discuss the old marriage promise between his father and Bernadetta’s grandfather. He isn’t sure how much Bernadetta knows of it aside from the arrangement existing from when they were in their preteen years, but he cannot imagine she had a better time of the knowledge than he did.

It was their mothers who broke off the engagement. Ferdinand had heard unkind rumours about Bernadetta from Constance that had frightened him, and, for a number of years, he believed that was the reason for the end to their engagement. Going through his mother’s records following her death and without his father’s knowledge, he found the correspondence regarding how little his mother trusted Count Varley. She leveraged knowledge of the Countess’s affair with a commoner in Ogma to push her to convince her husband and father-in-law to break the engagement.

It is instances like this that are why, towards the end, Ferdinand’s father called his wife a witch. It was an unkind thing, reflecting the long-standing unhappiness in their marriage. Ferdinand’s father had wanted a pretty and entertaining showpiece wife, and he had set his sights on nothing less than the very best. For his hubris, he had gotten the beautiful expert entertainer second daughter of the Barony Oches, who was deeply pious and considered him abhorrent and disgusting. She did her wifely duty for her own motivations that had nothing to do with the Goddess and was rewarded for her sacrifice with a son all her own: in image, temperament, and values.

“Ferdinand,” Hubert says.

Ferdinand blinks. He realises that he’s just been standing and staring off into nothing. Hubert holds a ledger, open past the front pages. Petra is looking over the map again, leaning down close to read the notations that Ferdinand’s mother wrote in years ago.

“Yes, forgive me,” Ferdinand says, and he steps forward to join them and chase the ghost out of his head. “I will explain…”

**ii.** _Up the Mountain_

Out of habit, Ferdinand rises before the sun.

It has been his habit since he was young enough to still be in shorts. The sun rose late and set early during the winter, and he was always eager to take as much time for himself as possible in it. In the summer, when the sun sometimes rose before the roosters, Ferdinand found he needed to sleep less. The short five or so hours of sleep did not affect his health, so, to the exasperation of his parents and household, he bounced awake as he pleased to rush off into mischief in the stables or out in the nature of the estate. They all hoped he would calm down when he got older and act more noble or, from Ferdinand’s mother’s point of view, like a respectable gentleman. It had seemed hard, but Ferdinand had expected he would settle as an adult as well.

By the time Ferdinand was an adult, however, the war came. He left the academy with all the drama he expected but under circumstances he grew to privately lament. He did not get to stand up to his father as a man in his own right, but rather by becoming a soldier for a cause his father did not support. Lorenz suggested perhaps Ferdinand had gotten lucky, since they had suspected Ferdinand might be disowned if he tried to take his father to task for his political and financial underhandedness. To Lorenz, being disowned was the worst thing imaginable. Ferdinand saw and initially agreed with his point, but he now also feels that it would have brought more closure than his father’s sudden passing in the last weeks of the war.

Outside of his father, however, Ferdinand has much to be thankful for regarding his choices. Through recommendation by Seteth, he gained a commission in the Church’s branch of the Wyvern Air Service. His natural ability to function on little to no sleep was a boon then, and he learned quickly how to fly his wyvern in formations and not just as a hobby. He did not get on well with many of the other officers at training for reasons that ranged from opinions regarding his father to his closeness to Petra, who he grew close to during those hard months. They were both early risers, and they used that to their advantage to have their coffee and breakfast before the rancorous crowd awoke to trouble them.

“It will be different, not to wake up to tea with you,” Petra said on one of the last mornings of training and after they had received notice that she would be assigned to provide coverage to the frontline infantry battalions and Ferdinand to the first wave of naval landings. “But it is for the best. Our assignments reflect our best qualities.”

Petra was given to seasickness, although she was a strong swimmer. Ferdinand did not suffer seasickness and was a strong enough swimmer. As commanders and combatants, they had similar qualities, so the balance that command struck could not be contested. Ferdinand poured them both more of the weak floral tea and chose not to say anything because if he allowed himself to speak, it would come out childish and ignoble for his neediness.

His restraint was not rewarded. At sea, he had never slept well. The rocking of the ship and the creaking of the fixtures kept him awake, and he spent the majority of the longer transports in silent agony as he awaited landing. Rising before the sun was his way to let his agony out through writing or exercise, which he had the luxury of privacy to carry out in his quarters. The privacy made the extra workload and responsibilities of a larger command worthwhile.

The lack of sleep, though, has come with some unpleasant side effects since the end of the war. Ferdinand often finds himself awake and alone with nothing much to do after making tea and doing his morning wash basin. Before the war, he was too young to ever find himself at odds and ends, and there was always work to do after that. The end of the war has brought Ferdinand the tyranny of the early morning, populated only by drunkards who see it still as night and too much darkness to be safe to take Tristan out for a trot.

He returns to the stables as light begins to filter in through the clouds. The stablemaster’s apprentice is just starting work, and he greets Ferdinand with a bow with his coffee cup still in hand. Ferdinand nods before dismounting Tristan and leading him into the open stall. Lorenz’s stallion is in the adjacent stall dressed in a vibrant purple stable blanket, and Petra’s stallion is in the opposite stall with a hand-decorated blanket featuring wildflowers. At the end of the stable, Ferdinand knows Hubert’s mare is likely covered in practical black, but she is kept separate from the other horses as she is, much like Hubert, a bit grouchy.

Ferdinand goes about the motions of brushing down Tristan, listening vaguely to the stablemaster arriving and the conversation between him and his apprentice. Ferdinand is more than aware that they would likely be joking around if he was not here. He, Lorenz, and Petra are planning to go riding together after their breakfast to give Hubert and Mercedes time to wake up and ready for the day at a leisurely pace. Likely the stable staff have a lot they would like to gossip about, but they are not yet comfortable to do so when Ferdinand is here.

It bothers Ferdinand. He leaves the stables after exchanging warm but remote farewells with the stable staff and spends the walk back to the main house mulling over how he will overcome this. He is aware that he has only been back in Aegir for three weeks, and the whole of House Aegir has gone through much upheaval with the death of the former Duke, the war, the end of the war, and the return and installment of Ferdinand as its lord after over half a decade away. Ferdinand is also aware that his serious, withdrawn mood does not help his cause either.

Ferdinand, as he ascends the stairwell from the ground floor to the breakfast room, rolls his eyes at himself. He wonders, with no small amount of self-admonishment, how his mother managed to do all that she did, especially with a husband as inattentive and insulting at turns as the former Duke. The household structure is still very much her doing, even after nearly a decade since her death. Ludwig had only maintained it with disinterested eyes.

There is a part of Ferdinand that is more and more coming to understand he fundamentally does not and never will understand his father. Coming back to Aegir has thrown Ferdinand more off-kilter than the entire war. Everything since they achieved victory on that decimated battlefield on the continent has been so mind-bogglingly complex that sometimes Ferdinand nearly wishes he could go back to war. He doesn’t know if this is a weakness or a strength. He wonders, as he removes and tucks his gloves into the right back pocket of his riding trousers, what this says about him.

Lorenz and Petra are already at the breakfast table, which does not surprise Ferdinand at all. Lorenz wakes at an early hour to go over his correspondence as he likes to be both informed and to get any troublesome messages out of the way. He doesn’t actually like being awake early, and he uses the time alone to moderate his temper and do his prayers. Petra is like Ferdinand; she rises naturally before the sun, and she likes to do calisthenics and have a thorough bath before joining the rest of the world.

“Good morning,” Ferdinand says, waving his hands to stop them from rising. “Please, stay seated. Did you sleep well?”

“Good morning, Ferdinand,” Lorenz says, clearly struggling to move away from their formalities. “I am pleased by the rose petal tea.”

“Sleep came easily,” Petra says, reaching out to pour Ferdinand a cup of tea as he pulls off his riding coat.

“Oh, I am pleased to hear this,” Ferdinand says because it does brighten his dreary mood; he reaches out to serve himself a bit of blackcurrant jam for his toast. “My morning ride was pleasant, and I do not think it will rain to heavily today, but if you should need oilcloths –”

“I have planned ahead,” Lorenz says as after swallowing a spoonful of softboiled egg, “but thank you.”

“I will borrow an oilcloth,” Petra says, placing a spoonful of egg on her toast; Ferdinand is pleased to see she has been liberal with the butter. “You are unusually good at household management.”

“I enjoy it,” Ferdinand says because he does. “I believe it should go hand in hand with the other duties of my station.”

Lorenz nods, unwilling to speak with his mouth full. Ferdinand takes the opportunity to take a long sip of his tea. It is a little over-brewed for his tastes, but he is late to the breakfast table, and he would not have wanted his guests’ food to become cold waiting. The meal is laid out just as he likes it for guests with the blue wildflower morning china and plain silverware. There is blackcurrant and strawberry jam as well as fresh butter from the town, and the bread is the local oat loaf that Ferdinand likes best. Petra and Lorenz have been served some of the sausage as well, but Ferdinand prefers a bit of smoked haddock.

“Still on the fish in the morning, I see,” Lorenz observes as Ferdinand puts half of his serving in his mouth.

“I understand you did not enjoy the jerky on the sea crossing,” Petra says, lightly teasing.

“I have nothing against fish jerky,” Lorenz says, which gives away his great dislike of all other jerky, “but it is too much for the morning.”

Ferdinand smiles as Petra rolls her eyes with a wide grin and eats the other half of his haddock.

❧

The sky is gray as Ferdinand, Petra, and Lorenz ride out after breakfast, but the air is calm and carries only a little chill.

The path towards the ridge has not been trodden in a while. The sheep have kept it from growing over with grass, but there are patches of moss and lichen on the edges. Lorenz and Petra continue their conversation about the weather from breakfast, but Ferdinand does not pay attention to their words. Lorenz, being from Gloucester, knows little practical of the difference between Oche’s sea wind and the constant rain from the Port of Nuvelle. Petra, Ferdinand has come to understand, knows a lot of the western coast of Albinea as well as Brigid. She is used to abundant rainfall.

Aegir is close enough to have the benefit of the fog collecting along the hills, but it is far enough away from the sea to see semi-regular sunlight in the summer months. The growth of moss and lichen reflect that the weather was good and likely the settling autumn will be mild. Ferdinand has not yet had time to ride out further afield to visit the orchards, but he suspects from the accounts that they will be in good shape.

“Perhaps if we have a bit of sun tomorrow,” Lorenz says when Ferdinand suggests they see the orchards while they are visiting. “I do not know how you stand the chill.”

“It is not as cold as a night flight often is,” Petra points out, a hint of a teasing smile on her lips when Lorenz raises a doubtful eyebrow at him. “I wish to see the orchards. We grow many things in Brigid, and it is useful to learn new soils.”

Lorenz huffs but does not argue. They are all lords of land dependent upon good harvests and livestock, the latter particularly for Lorenz and the prized Gloucester cattle trade.

As they approach the ridge, Ferdinand slows Tristian. Petra and Lorenz also slow, following his gaze towards the depression in the earth.

“I do not remember this,” Ferdinand says, although he isn’t sure if it is to his friends or to himself.

He moves Tristian off the main path and towards a broken trunk of a tree that fell long enough ago for moss to grow over. Petra and Lorenz hang back for a moment until Ferdinand moves to dismount. They join him and tie up their horses loosely.

“What is different?” Petra asks as she checks her knot.

“There used to be some large rocks here,” Ferdinand says because he remembers clambering on them after small birds and squirrels. “They may have slid down the hill during a storm, or maybe someone has come to take them to town for a building. I did not know there was a hole beneath them.”

“It would have been quite recent,” Petra says as she steps forward to peer into the opening. “I suspect this will cave in when the weather turns awful.”

“Which will be sooner rather than later,” Lorenz mutters.

Ferdinand represses the childish urge to roll his eyes. He moves to join Petra at the mouth of the hole, pooling a bit of Fire in the palm of his right hand. The hole is not particularly deep, but it goes into the hill far enough to be dark. Petra shifts aside enough for Ferdinand to use his left hand to steady himself as he inserts his Fire into the hole.

“Oh,” Petra says, voicing the surprise Ferdinand is only just registering himself, “is that silver?”

“What?” Lorenz says, stepping forward and squatting down into the dirt to try to get a look. “Ferdinand, make your Fire brighter.”

“Give me a second,” Ferdinand says, trying to look at the metal as well as control his Fire enough to not set the whole hole aflame. “I am not a mage –”

“Shove over then,” Lorenz sniffs, his own Fire blossoming so easily into his palm and with great control. “Now then, what…”

He trails off. In shock and awe that Ferdinand certainly shares.

Gold and silver and gems sparkle even amongst the damp and dirt. Lorenz makes a strangled noise in his throat. His Fire brightens but does not grow in size. Ferdinand cannot find it in himself to be annoyed with Lorenz’s haughty showmanship.

“Wow,” Petra breathes, perhaps even more awestruck than she was when they first saw Napoleon’s flagship together. “This is… I barely believe it.”

Ferdinand nods. He reaches out, dropping fully onto his knees, and begins to pull out several of the smaller objects. Lorenz shifts more to the side, keeping his Fire within the hole. Petra kneels down as well, reaching out and grasping the handle of a dagger, still in a sheath of some sort. Ferdinand turns the small pieces in his hand and is surprised to realize that –

“These are armour pieces,” he says, leaning back a bit to show both Lorenz and Petra, who has partially unsheathed the dagger to reveal a shining, sharp blade. “This must be very old.”

“And valuable,” Lorenz says, very matter of fact. “I am quite certain all of that is silver.”

Petra sheathes the dagger and sets it between herself and Ferdinand, who pulls off his riding gloves and lays the small pieces of the gauntlet atop them for safekeeping. Lorenz frowns slightly, lowering his head just enough to see better into the hole.

“There’s a lot,” he says as Petra leans forward and takes hold of another dagger handle and more of the gauntlet pieces. “You don’t think this was put here recently?”

“No,” Ferdinand confirms as Petra withdraws the second dagger, which has a much more ornate sheath and a slightly curved handle. “There were rocks here for all of my youth. I think they must have been moved to build something in town.”

“Your father would have allowed it?” Petra asks as Ferdinand reaches into the hole and begins pushing away dirt from a larger object.

“I think my father has not been paying much attention to the land he could not see out the window,” Ferdinand says because even in the latter half of his youth, he had been aware that his father was lax on what went on the estate. “I would not be surprised if the rocks were sold by our shepherds or an enterprising groundskeeper. There has been great turnover of our groundskeepers.”

They also cost rather too much, based upon the poorly kept documentation Ferdinand looked over the night before. The only reason the high cost of managing the estate has not done damage to the house accounts is the sale during the war of the wool and mutton as well as a surplus in the past three lambing seasons has kept House Aegir well-supported.

Ferdinand forcibly shoves these thoughts down before they may distract him from this much more interesting discovery. He brushes off some twigs and a couple of what look bizarrely like owl pellets, dirtying his shirtsleeves as he realises that much of the smaller material rests in some sort of large, shallow bowl.

“Hold on a moment,” Ferdinand says, somewhat needlessly. “This is big.”

He gropes around to find the ends of the bowl and carefully curls his fingers around it to try to lift. It makes a very faint squelching sound but otherwise gives no resistance to him lifting it from the dirt. He pulls slightly forward into Lorenz’s Firelight.

It is heavily coated in grime, but it is obviously a shield. Ferdinand yanks it out from the dirt, finding the weight to be unusually light for something of its size. He rubs his now unsalvageable sleeve over the domed curve of the shield, pushing much of the mud and decaying debris off from the middle of the intricate design.

“Oh,” Petra breathes.

There is a lion’s face carved of gold. Its eyes are set with orange gems that Ferdinand is able to make glitter by simply rubbing with the pad of his thumb. The lion’s face is framed by a full mane of hair made of knotted spirals. Its nose is well-shaped and sharp just above its gently parted maw.

Something in Ferdinand feels like it is sliding. Away.

Open.

The air is clean. Aegir is damp. Familiar. Unchanged. Peaceful.

The lion’s eyes are diamonds. They reflect light that does not shine here.

The war is over. Ferdinand knows this, and yet –

Ferdinand is on the ground. He is clothed in wyvern blood. They shot Iseult. She screamed, and they fell, and now Ferdinand is on the ground.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

Beneath his feet, the ground squelches. There is fire. It is not magical. There are collapsed cannons. Gunfire.

His lance is broken. Iseult is dead. They fell.

He should be in pain.

_Just a little further…_

The battlefield is made out of fire, ash, and bodies. Alive and dead and in chaos, it cannot be perceived and yet is clearer than anything on this earth. Ferdinand raises his sword. He does not have to think. He does not have to feel. This is what he knew would always happen. Yet –

_Mother…_

He cuts forward. Sword. The staff of his lance. The world rattles. Overfocuses.

It is too bright.

_Please wait a little longer._

It is raining. The smoke falls down and coats the ground. Other things fall, too. It is too massive to process.

_Please._

Edelgard is screaming, but Ferdinand cannot see her, and her orders are being swallowed by the guns. Claude is roaring, but it is raining, and Ferdinand’s eyes fill with water and blood splatter when he looks up. Six yard ahead, Dimitri appears to be lifting a cannon. He howls like a wolf.

This is where Ferdinand left a part of himself.

This is what he brought home.

Kneeling in the dirt in Aegir,

_I refuse to die here!_

Holding the Ochain Shield:

The Crest of Cichol shines.


End file.
